Friday Sep 02, 2011

In the BI/EPM View of Oracle Unified Method we introduced the idea of Black and White box Use Cases.

Black-Box Use Case Black-box use cases capture requirements at the level of observable behavior, but do not reveal the internal workings of the business or system. Most use cases are written at the black-box level to maintain the separation between requirements and design. Within this view, black-box use cases are most applicable to development of a custom BI system, but would also apply to the implementation of BI and EPM product-based systems that require custom extensions that support new data entry or reporting requirements.

White-Box Use Case White-box use cases capture requirements that reveal the internal workings of a business or system. White-box use cases detail how the system will satisfy the requirements. White-box use cases are applicable on projects that will implement BI and EPM product-based systems to document requirements regarding changes in the way the product needs to work.

Black-Box versus White-Box

It is important to understand how black-box and white-box use cases are applied to support BI and EPM projects.

Black-box use cases are typically used to capture requirements related to the development of new data entry, display, and reporting mechanisms. This includes new custom data entry and report components or data entry and reporting extensions being made to a BI or EPM product.

White box use cases are used to capture requirements related to the development or customization of internal data extraction, transformation, and loading components. These requirements typically result in the configuration or customization of existing EPM or BI Apps products. When using white-box use cases, remember to keep the use cases at the level of requirements and not to delve into system design.